Dead Sea, Jordan – The government of Jordan wants to connect 50% of the country’s population to the internet by 2012. The minister of Information and Communication Technology, Basem Fawaz Rousan, said this Wednesday (11th) that the goal was set in 2007, when 12% of the inhabitants had access to the Web. Now, according to him, the rate has already gone up to 30%.
"Jordan has few natural resources, therefore we must invest in human resources," said the minister during a meeting with the president of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, Salim Taufic Schahin, and the director of the organization, Mustapha Abdouni. "We are working for the information technology and telecommunication sectors to become the main industry in the country," he added.
According to Rousan, the Jordanian government promotes "several actions designed to strengthen the sector and expand its knowledge-based economy," One such action consists of connecting all of the schools in the country using optical fibre. It is through the schools that the plan aims to propagate the use of the Internet in the communities. "The schools are going to be the hub for distributing the services," said the minister.
Another project in the pipeline consists of supplying laptop computers to all of the students, so that the use of computers is encouraged from an early age, and spreads across the families. In this respect, according to Rousan, the issue of cost still needs to be solved, but the idea is to provide students low-cost machines to be paid in small instalments.
The minister added that currently, approximately 6,000 professionals in the sector graduate each year at the Jordanian universities, whereas the sector employs 21,000 people each year and has annual revenues of US$ 2.2 billion. Jordan exports specialized workers in the field, and the 160 existing local companies cater to clients in the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
